Download only changed files git

Question

I have forked a project on GitHub and I want to download only the changed files from the original repo. Is it possible to do this?

Answer 1

git fetch (or git pull to automatically merge)

Answer 2

Yes and no. You have to get the whole repo, but when you merge it locally, it only brings in the changed files. There is a walkthrough here.

The important line is this:

git remote add upstream git://github.com/original/repo.git

And then the actual fetching/merging can be done like this (two steps):

git fetch upstream master
git merge upstream/master

or in one step:

git pull upstream master

(Examples take from the GitHub link provided above)